Noting that continued efforts are needed to strengthen democracy, create prosperity, expand economic opportunities and realize the human potential of our people, they affirmed at the summit that ‘progress towards more democratic societies, growing economies and social equity relies on an educated citizenry and a skilled labor force’.

It was also agreed that there was need for a ‘series of policies to improve access to quality education through teacher training, education in civic values and the use of information technologies both in our classrooms and in measuring progress toward achieving these goals’. (Declaration of Quebec City, 2001 Summit of the Americas meeting)

In that regard, the Heads of state of the hemisphere committed themselves to ‘formulate and implement policies, within the framework of a strategy for resolving social inequalities, to promote access to quality basic education for all, including early childhood and adult education, particularly to promote literacy’. (Pg 30 of Summit Plan of Action). Therefore, a critical dimension of the strategy they adopted was to focus on reading achievement as one of the goals we would pursue in this hemisphere over the years to follow.

It is in this context that the President of the United States, President George W Bush, in his ‘No Child Left Behind’ programme committed funds for the programme we are here to launch today – the Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CETT) project.

The CETT project intended to assist us in achieving one of the principal goals of our education system. As a government, we have always placed the acquisition of functional literacy as a basic standard to be attained by everyone in our society. Our aim is that every child leaving school should be reading at or above grade level so that he or she is able to meaningful participate in the development of our country, and realize his or her potential as a dignified human being.

This ideal is particularly critical for our children in a global society where the movement of people and capital is the norm. We need to ensure that our children are not placed at a disadvantage in terms of our competitiveness as a society. We need to guarantee that the educational attainments of our children are comparable or even better to those of their peers in both developing and developed countries.

Indeed, every child who leaves our education system unable to read to a standard consistent with their level of maturity, is one child too many that we have allowed to fail. Unfortunately, we still have the unenviable spectacle of seeing some of our children exit the education system without the reading competencies necessary to participate fully in the process of development.

The deficits realized in the early years of a child as he or she moves through the first grades of the education system, present so great a challenge later on for our teachers, that inevitably some slip through the cracks to their economic, social and developmental detriment later. We therefore need to accelerate our efforts to ensure that the students are provided with the most effective and targeted instructional regime, that enables them to experience the exciting world of knowledge that is accessed only by the ability to read.

What this calls for is a reformulation of our educational philosophy as a government and people. We are therefore in the process of adopting a revised policy on the education and human resource development of all Grenadians, and the Ministry of Education is about to present its revised strategic plan for the development of education in this country. To this end we believe that:

1. Literacy development must be at the centre of our education system especially at the pre-school and primary levels. Our children must all leave primary schools literate – being able to write what they can say and read what they can write.

2. Our focus must be on prevention rather than remediation. We must develop the reading abilities of our children early in their life so that we would not have the need to spend much on correcting the deficiencies in reading competence. Our children must develop a love for reading and the art of reading early in their lives;

3. We have to promote the pervasive application of best practices in reading instruction so that students in every school have a quality learning experience in developing excellence in reading;

4. Our teachers must have the technical and professional skills and expertise in delivering quality reading instruction as well as a supportive environment to facilitate their work;

5. The basic materials (such as those exhibited at the model classroom display in this room) are needed to deliver quality reading instruction to our children;

6. Parents must promote the importance of reading, model its value to their children, provide a supportive environment at home and partner with the school to assist the teacher in his or her work;

7. Principals must fully embrace the project and seek to manage and lead the staff and school community to realizing the attainment targets set for all.

8. All appropriate technology must be utilized in promoting reading achievement - be it the books, computer programmes, on-line and distance training modalities and teacher-made or commercially developed instructional materials.

It is because of the above, that as a Government, we did not hesitate to approve, in May 2004, the participation of Grenada in the Caribbean CETT project even though it meant that the Government would have to provide the funds for the implementation of the project. We made preparations to be integrated in the CETT programme from September 2004 and even conducted training of the teachers in July 2004 to ensure that the programme would start on time. However, with the destructive advent of Hurricane Ivan, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) came to our assistance and provided the funds for the commencement of the programme in the 18 schools which were selected.

We are certainly grateful to the United States government for its generous support to us in this initiative. Your assistance has given us the basic capital investment in the project upon which we can build. We do look forward to whatever additional support you may be able to provide, as we work together to promote the continued development of the citizens of this country and the region.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this project comes at a crucial time in our development. We are emerging from the wide scale devastation of 2 hurricanes. This means that the gains we had achieved prior to the disasters must not be eroded and, in fact, we need to build on them and accelerate our strategy of robust human resource development.

In addition, we are entering the Caribbean Single Market and Economy and would want our people to participate meaningfully in the free movement across the region taking advantages of opportunities as they present themselves. Further, we have committed ourselves to provide universal secondary education to all children and in that regard must ensure that every child is able to make full use of the secondary and tertiary education opportunities that would naturally occur.

We have to broaden and deepen our people’s participation in our democracy and provide the human resource means for continuing economic development and positive social transformation. All of these can only be done if we have the kinds of educational achievement that are characteristics of countries with higher levels of national development than we have.

We all fully understand, that one of the causes for the persistent underachievement of a significant percentage of every age cohort that goes through the education system, is their inability to read. Furthermore, we know that the problem starts in the early grades. The CETT project is deliberately targeting schools that are in comparatively disadvantaged contexts, schools where the desire is present but the resources and support that is needed is not as available.

This government is committed to ensuring that every effort is made to help schools do better and children learn. We recognize that unless we wrestle the problem of reading, we would forever be wishing for improved student achievement without the tangible results to show for the hard work of teachers.

Of course, I must comment on the exciting innovation which the CETT project is going to facilitate in Grenada. As many of you are aware, an important aspect of the project is the establishment and effective functioning of a Wireless Wide Area Network. This network would link the Ministry of Education, the T A Marryshow Community College and the project schools to facilitate communication and collaboration across our state.

The system will connect 2 of our schools in Carriacou and Petit Martinique allowing for a full integration of the geographic dimensions of our state. The system will provide the capability for management of the project schools and, of note, video conferencing to support activities such as teacher training, management meetings, sharing of best practices and teacher-to-teacher collaboration. Imagine the prospect of training sessions conducted at the College with teachers in schools across the country participating live via video conferencing.

As our Prime Minister is the Caricom Head with responsibility for Science and Technology, I am particularly pleased that Grenada will provide leadership in this technological innovation. The system will facilitate the delivery of training opportunities by the College to the wider national community without persons having to travel to St. George’s to the college campus to attend classes.

This will facilitate the reach of the College as a truly national community college. In addition, with the establishment of the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) headquartered here in Grenada, would be able to provide our learning community especially teachers with the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues from across the region on a regular basis.

I must point out that as the Caribbean CETT project is a model of the integrated application of best practice in improving the reading competence of students, the schools in which it is being implemented will serve as catalysts for the replication of the best practices in the other schools in the country.

Every teacher who is involved in reading instruction must be trained and supported in delivering quality teaching in literacy development. The other schools would be supported to ensure that the best practices are adopted and applied. Further, we are going to seek to apply the model of the Caribbean CETT as developed for reading for the critical area of Mathematics. As a result, we hope in the very near future to have the application of best practices for both literacy and numeracy pervasive in our primary schools, and where applicable, in the secondary schools.

Let me invite all of our partners in supporting this initiative. In particular, I wish to ask the business community to consider ways in which it can support the Ministry of Education in the effective and expanded implementation of this initiative. We note that in other jurisdictions in the region, the private sector supports the project in a number of tangible ways.

Indeed, while government would accept its responsibility and continue to develop and implement programmes that would result in improving the learning achievement of our people, we realize that resources and support are needed from all national stakeholders. Education is, indeed, everyone’s business.

I wish to thank the University of the West Indies for accepting the responsibility to be the executing agency for this project through the Joint Boards of Teacher Education. We are grateful to the principals, teachers and parents who have shown their commitment to the effective implementation of the project. I wish to commend the Ministry of Education for the leadership it continues to provide in promoting meaningful education reform as we increasingly provide quality education for our people.

As a government we affirm the goal that no child should be left behind in learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together.

I wish every success in the implementation of this reading project and look forward to the results of improved student performance in attaining the reading and writing standards we have set for them in our primary schools. I pledge our commitment to the programme and extend my commendation to all.

I thank you.